Carter Jones was born on May 6, 1913, in Washington, D.C., and attended St. Bernard Prep School in Cullman, Alabama and Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
His street photography, a photo essay of a beggar and nuns (shot from the window of his flat) was published in Life and reproduced in the US Camera Annual of 1954.
[7] The couple had five children; two girls and three boys,[1] including a boy and girl from Jones' previous marriage, and the children appeared in many of Jones' photographs,[8][9] including in advertising for Scott Paper Products, Canada Dry, Total Cereal and others,[10] and US Camera 1962, p.155, features his picture showing brothers playing in the hay, a photo also used in Caroline Kennedy's A Patriot's Handbook.
[11][12] In 1955, Edward Steichen, director of the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art, selected one of Jones’ photographs for the world-touring exhibition The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors.
[1] On September 4, 1968, Carter Jones was killed in a plane crash while returning from an assignment in a single-engine Piper Cherokee being piloted through dense fog by aerial photographer Louis Haslbeck,[16] the owner of the Manahawkin Airport where they were trying to land.